To See More

9 hrs. 59 min.

Language Russian

Author Mark Kharitonov

Narrator Sergey Kirsanov

Description

Mark Kharitonov’s new novel reads like an engaging intellectual detective story, somewhat akin to his Booker-nominated novel “Lines of Fate, or the Cedar Box of Milashevich.” But if there the researcher reconstructed the history and destinies of those who are gone, sifting through scattered notes that ended up in his hands on candy wrappers, here the writer-hero tries to penetrate the fate of his father—of whom there is almost nothing left, and what remains needs to be verified again. Hope is sometimes less in testimonies, documents, than in the work of a creative imagination that may be more reliable than appearances. “To see more than what you’re shown”—a gift granted to few; it requires strain and inner work. And the credibility of the understanding that emerges determines the actual course of life at the same time. Imagination opens up the real world—if it is benign; then an arbitrary fantasy can turn into a substitution, a defeat, a disaster. Thus, a new mythology—historical, national—gives rise to bloody clashes.